The defining factor of any Search Engine Marketing (SEM) campaign is its keywords. The planning of SEM Keywords spells the success or doom of an Ad campaign. What makes keywords important is the fact that well planned keywords make sure that your ad appears when a relevant search is made. Further more, keywords drive a searcher to click the Ad which ultimately lead to conversion. But before diving into the keyword planning tips part of the blog. It would be appropriate to first have a little insight into what SEM Keywords are?

SEM Keywords: Insight

If someone wants to buy a commodity or avail a service, what is it that he or she will do?

They will turn to an online search engine. And type a ‘few words’ that accurately defines the service or commodity they want. These ‘few words’ chosen by the searcher to define what they need are called Keywords. This was from a customer’s point of view.

As an advertiser one needs to understand, predict or imagine the variety of words customers may use to search the service or commodity offered by them. This can be a bit tricky because different individuals may use different words to define the same product. For example, if a person wants to buy a T-shirt. In the search engine he types the keyword T-shirt. If the person is male he may choose to search for men’s T-shirt. A customer who is more specific about what he wants may search for men’s polo T-shirt. Also he may specify a particular brand he is looking for.

Thus as an advertiser, it is of paramount importance to identify the words and phrases that describe what you are offering clearly.

It is not possible to think and identify all the words customers might be using to describe desired product or service. The good news is that you don’t have to. There are an array of tools that can be used to search and identify best suited keywords for an ad campaign.

Google Adwords keyword planner is one such tool. You just need to input your product and suggest a few keywords that come to your mind and that’s all. The keyword planner does the rest. It will search and list out all the words related to the product and submitted keywords. In addition to the list of keywords, planner will also provide valuable data about the suggested words, for example number of times it’s being searched, PPC bid, etc. Because advertisers will be bidding on the keywords, this data proves to be rather critical in selecting them.

5 Tips For Planning SEM Keywords

There are certain criterion, practices and tips which not only help in gaining clicks and traffic on your website but also in improving the ad rank. Below are listed five most important tips that should be followed while planning and executing the SEM keywords.

1. Relevance

Starting point of keyword planning should be the website pages, to which the keywords link (called landing pages). Content of the landing pages may provide a fairly good number of keywords to start with and further build upon them. This also adds to the Google’s relevancy factor because the keywords are from the landing page. Relevant keywords improve the ad rank. Also, relevant keywords build trust. If your keywords truly reflect the product and your ad takes the customer to exactly what he is looking for, it will most likely lead to purchases. Also relevancy saves money by avoiding unnecessary clicks.

2. Location, Language And Audience Targeting

Identifying your customers. Who are you going to target? This all depends on your business. Include location and language targeting if relevant to your business. Similarly, age, gender, marital status, parental status, device, operating system, etc. based targeting can also be fruitful. Seasonal and festival targeting is also used. Targeting insures that your ad appears in front of correct audiences.

Broad keywords can bring a lot of traffic to a website which also contains many irrelevant visitors and hence have a low conversion rate. Targeted keywords which exactly describe the product, on the other hand, attract customers who are searching for the exact same product and therefore have a high conversion rate. Phrase match is even more targeted and caters to very specific search demand. For example a search for ‘white leather formal shoes’.

Keywords having high volume and low competition are a very poorly used group of words. Generally about 30 percent of the keywords are competitive and rest 70 percent which collectively have very high volume are usually ignored or undermined. These comprise the long tail of the search demand curve.

4. Tools And Analysis

Various tools are available which not only help in identifying and planning SEM keywords but also lets you know what are your competitors keywords. Furthermore, they also provide information about the search volume and bidding details of the keywords. Keyword Planner is one among many such tools.

Analysing the selected keywords is also important. Once an Ad campaign is active, it is essential to analyse the performance of the keywords from time to time. The work is never done as long as campaign is running. Constant scrutiny and modifications of the Ad campaign is necessary to get maximum value for money.

5. Negative Keywords

Negative keywords are those which are used to avoid displaying ads for irrelevant searches. Advertiser’s ad will not be displayed on the result page of the search having negative keywords. Strategic use of negative keywords can prevent unrelated traffic on your website. This would save frustration and money as well. Caution should be taken to not overuse negative keywords as it might affect the conversion rate.